1) SFA Horizon requires no presence - this was in the regs in JAR, I haven't checked with EASA FCL how that has changed. But accordingly it can be done without those 3 weeks/ 10% presence courses.
Special Conversion Offer Courses - Horizon SFA
http://www.horizon-sfa.ch/wp-content...PF_2012-02.pdf
(if you speak German, this is the article by which you have a lot of your questions answered by a very reliable chief editor)
4) A fellow aviator goes your route and chose Bartolini Air in Poland (bang for the buck, good facilities, reputable CAA/ examiners in the country; but if it's Iceland or Spain, just make sure their MEP is affordable :-)).
My 2 cents: Get the OAT books whilst you work on your FAA route (can only commend you for this, btw), parallely do the question banks (the ones from SFA Horizon don't let you keep score - thus I bought aviationexam.com which has a few upsides, such as forum an explanations given in context and pretty good feedback by instructors, but I go crazy by the sheer volume of questions and thus shall by the OAT CD-ROM of about 2100 or 2400 questions so I spare myself the permutations of the same questions over and over again; they are so bad by FAA scales, it's mindnumbing!).
The books will go deeper than what you need across the Atlantic, the question bank will scare you enough ;-).
Good luck! I did the same but struggle with my timeline, with family and job...